Mark Finnane

Biography

Mark Finnane is an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow at Griffith University, where he is Professor of History in the School of Humanities. He is a former Dean of Humanities and Dean of Graduate Studies at Griffith. He was Director of the Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS) in 2009. He was a Member of the ARC College of Experts (2008-10). He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (since 2001) and has served on the Council of the Academy (2006-10). Mark’s doctoral research on mental illness is the foundation for his later work on the history of policing, punishment and criminal justice. His books include Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland (1981 and 2003), Police and Government: Histories of Policing in Australia (1994), Punishment in Australian Society (1997), When Police Unionise: The Politics of Law and Order in Australia (2002) and J.V. Barry: a Life (2007). Mark’s current research, funded through an ARC Professorial Fellowship, focuses on responses to violence in Australian history. He published (with Professor Heather Douglas, University of Queensland) Indigenous Crime and Settler Law: White Sovereignty after Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), a study of the criminal law’s response to Aboriginal crimes of violence over the last two centuries. At CEPS, Mark leads the project Historical Threats, investigating the changing political, institutional, legal and social conditions that characterise modern institutions and discourses of policing and security.